Monthly Archives: April 2013

On Monday, my friend posted an interesting article on her facebook page – 24 Lies People tell Women. I found the post to be entertaining but missing a few lies that have been shoved down my self-identified lady throat. I’m going to talk about one that has been bothering me a LOT recently.

Lie #25 – Women must be physically fit, but not athletic enough to make men feel inferior

Let it be known that I really like Philly. Like, like-like. The friends I have there are the most genuine and open and loving that I’ve encountered and I truly admire and respect and adore them for that. That’s why when a couple of my close friends decided they wanted to organize a community discussion on sexuality* and self expression I fell that much more in like. I’d really love to tell you all about that event but first I’d like to step back. I want to explain why a couple of the fundamental concepts it assumed are important to me and how they have positively affected my life and relationships. I also hope to encourage you to start internalizing those concepts and start having interesting discussions with yourselves and with the people around you.

After talking with one of the organizers I found out that the main catalyst for starting the discussion was watching the following TEDTalk** by Esther Perel on desire (and, ultimately, sexual fulfillment) in long term relationships:

There’s already a pretty excellent discussion going on in the comments over on Logan‘s post My Strength is not for Hurting, re: relationships between men and women, expectations, and men’s “provider role.”

I’d also love to declare this comment thread a place to talk about definitions of masculinity. Historical, current, ideal, theoretical, attractive, unattractive, exceptions, personal stories, let’s hear any and all of that.

Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex: awesome OKcupid article showing how homosexuals are not trying push their “gay agenda” on society OR and eat the souls of heterosexuals- in fact, we’re all pretty similar in our behavior!

Girls Don’t Count: a great short narrative on how bisexuality is sometimes (maddeningly) discussed and perceived.

Kurd Men for equality: Basically a local Kurdish government tries to punish domestic abuse but still somehow keep their misogyny cred. In response, Kurdish men have been posting pictures of them wearing women’s clothes to show that being a woman is nothing to be ashamed of.

American Girls Aren’t Radical Anymore: “Since the company was bought by Mattel 15 years ago, the dolls and their stories have shied away from the controversial subjects that once made them distinctive.”

Despite my ovaries, I am not a lady. There’s no English word for what I am, but for the sake of simplicity let’s say that in American society I operate socially and sexually much like a man. My buddy Battle and I have a regular “boi night” where we consume substances and watch hockey,* my girlfriend introduces me as her “personfriend,” and I buy the drinks. I glare at people who call me “Miss” and give all the change in my pocket to the occasional panhandler who calls me “Sir.” I wear boxer briefs, pack literally four pieces of clothing when I go on vacation and I don’t dance, I sway.

I carve the goddamned turkey, ok?

Everyone at this Thanksgiving party was one million impressed forever #facts

Being a “man” when I have Brad Pitt‘s face, Cherie Currie‘s hair, Rosario Dawson‘s ass, Anne Hathaway’s crazy-ass smile and Justin Bieber‘s fashion sense; identify as part of the lesbian community; have some (but not all) stereotypical female anatomy; and was raised and socialized as a girl makes for some amount of cognitive dissonance in my daily life. But that I can handle–I’ve learned that boxer briefs are not incompatible with an addiction to CuteOverload dot com. But being a feminist “man” when my masculinity is rarely acknowledged outside the queer community (and often not even inside the queer community) is a C-H-A-L-L-E-N-G-E.

A lot of you are worried about me and my people. It’s true that we queers have a lot of oppression on our plates. You’re right to try to help us with our problems. But this time, the tables are turned. This time, I’m going to help you.

You see, straights, I’m worried about you. Specifically, I’m worried about the sex you’re having. There are some things you’ve said to me that have me really concerned about your sex lives. So I’m staging an intervention. Sit down and listen while I tell you about some of the worrying things you’ve told me, and my advice for fixing your problems.

1. “How does lesbian sex even work?”

The first problem right off the bat is how othering this question is. You make lesbian sex sound like some mysterious cosmic phenomenon, like the gravitational distortion caused by black holes. I mean, how does that even work? Lesbian sex is really not that weird, it definitely doesn’t require a PhD in astrophysics, and it’s not my job to educate you on all things queer.

But there’s another problem here, because the truth is, if you don’t understand how lesbian sex works, then your heterosexual sex is missing some really fun and exciting stuff.

The vast majority of bodily modifications demanded of women by our beauty standards – for instance, plucked eyebrows, painted lips, shaved legs, and exaggerated eyelashes – exist to accentuate the differences between men and women. Fashionable clothes for men and women are vastly different, with most women’s fashions being tailored to highlight and emphasize “feminine” shapes.

Not only is this dichotomy unfair (the burden of highlighting gender differences, in time and resources, falls disproportionately on women), it’s outright harmful to trans* and intersex people. When our beauty standard pushes people to the outside edges of the gender spectrum, it renders those who live in the middle invisible and tells anyone who doesn’t comply with rigid gender roles that they are “ugly.” That’s a major problem.

It’s unbelievable that I even have to tackle this topic but a surprisingly non-zero number of friends have told me they’ve had strangers come up to them and say things like “Oh, are you pregnant?!” or “When are you due?!” which I think I can safely extrapolate to the rest of American society. I have therefore compiled a list of things you should maybe think about before being this person:

A few days ago, popular feminist(ish) blog Jezebel published a rant titled “Fuck Cupcakes.” If it was some elaborate form of satire, I am about to be sorely embarrassed.

Because, what??

To summarize the post, Jezebel staff writer Katie Baker thinks cupcakes represent femininity, capitalism, and for some reason, “a vagina and the female orgasm.” Thus, their downfall (which she judges by a Wall Street Journal article about the crash of the cupcake industry) is a “a victory for feminism.”

Woah. Now, unless I really screw up and speak without thinking (as I do much more frequently than I’d like), I will never question a person’s right to feel personally oppressed by anything in our society. Different strokes, right? Everyone has their own baggage and issues to deal with. If something non-traditional or seemingly harmless factors into your personal equation somehow, who am I to judge? But once you post an article on a well-read news(ish) site with a sub header “The death of the cupcake is a victory for womankind” you better back that up somehow because now you’re speaking for me.

Now, it’s clear the author takes some personal issue with cupcakes: she writes, “the cupcake represents everything I am not but often wish I could be: domestic, meticulous, modest, sweet.” I can roll with that. Most of the time I don’t embody the femininity that society sometimes forces on me either. But this is also pretty much the only way Baker links cupcakes to women and femininity, and it’s not a very good link. I mean, you know what else is sweet? Mountain Dew. You know what else is small and cute? Doxins. Sliders. NAA Guardian Pistols (adorbs!)

Mmm. Tastes like gender equality.

Her other problem seems to be that cupcakes “represent capitalism” because there are successful cupcake businesses that trade expensive stock. I’m sorry, but pretty much everything you buy with money from a stockholder-owned corporation represents capitalism. That’s kind of how it works. Also, if you’re not going to even mention how you think a capitalist system is harmful, why bring it up?

Possibly the most ridiculous part of the article is where the author tells us that in addition to feminine domesticity, cupcakes are also “a symbol for both a vagina and the female orgasm.” First of all, she pulls this idea from another equally subjective article about cupcakes published in Jezebel last year (what is with all the cupcake hate you guys?) I don’t know if most people realize this, but if you make outlandish statements and cite them, they are still outlandish statements. “My colleague said so!” is not a credible source because last time I checked, Jezebel is not peer reviewed. Second of all, how are cupcakes like the female orgasm? They are things we need more of in this world? They are surrounded by misinformation? SOME PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE MYTHICAL? I aced AP LIT back in the day, but I’m missing the symbolism here.

Like I said before, if Fuck Cupcakes turns out to be a masterful satire of contemporary, mainstream, #firstworldproblems feminism, then I will apologize on bended knee. But for now, I object to this piece because articles like this make skeptics take feminism less seriously. They are designed to snag readers, not discuss issues. To me, feminism represents the chance to talk about very real social pressures on women, reproductive rights, rape culture, the intersectionality of women and racism and socioeconomic status. There is room for humor but not for making sweeping statements for all of womankind about how we’re oppressed by cupcakes. What do you think this does to my credibility when I’m arguing with my conservative relatives about why we still need affirmative action or how the media’s response to the Steubenville case perpetuated rape culture?

I’m all for reading things into the way our society works. I’m all for dismantling patriarchal oppression in as many different contexts as I can find them. But sometimes, a cupcake really is just a cupcake.

When the US Congress failed to pass a cap-and-trade bill to reduce carbon emissions in 2009, I commented to friends that it would take a hurricane hitting New York City to get this country to focus seriously on climate change. Well, that actually happened last fall.

And as people give up on effective action from the US government or the United Nations, people are increasingly talking about adaptation. When people talk about climate change, they speak of “adaptation” and “mitigation.” Mitigation is the actions we take to reduce our emissions so as to lessen the severity of climate change. Adaptation is the task of adapting social and natural systems to a changed climate the increasingly common and severe natural disasters that will result.

But let’s be real.

I have seen the devastation that nature can wreak first-hand, working on the front lines of relief and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. And I’ve studied the topic extensively in graduate school and reported on it from the floor of the UNFCC conference in Copenhagen. But the ugly truth is that, absent serious and near-term reduction of emissions, “adaptation” is triage at best. It is fundamentally insufficient to protect the billions who are most vulnerable to climate impacts—impacts that will fall disproportionately on women. The idea that we could just adapt to a changing climate is a cruel joke. But with climate change upon us, adaptation is also needed. Lessening suffering is important, and it is important to bring a gender analysis to this area.